Pride Month, full of parades and colorful events, is a time to celebrate. In fact, I had the joy of celebrating Pride alongside the Detroit Community at Motor City Pride this past weekend, check it out:

But while this is certainly a time to celebrate, for me, Pride also has a more personal significance.

Every June, I think about my mom. When my parents divorced in the 1980s, my mom came out and lived the rest of her life as a gay woman. Truth be told, coming out in 1986 in suburban Detroit wasn’t an easy thing to do. We largely hid it from school friends and co-workers.

My mom was part of a small but vibrant gay community in the greater Detroit area, which I grew up in. But that community was in the middle of the devastation wrought by the AIDS crisis, which only added to the fear and confusion faced by that community. That crisis ravaged some of my mom’s closest friends when I was a middle school student–just as I was becoming aware of current events and politics. One friend, in particular, who had done so much for our family in the wake of the divorce, wasted away before our very eyes due to the cruelty of AIDS before proper research and treatment. And I was forever changed by that.

Years later, my mom passed away in 2011 from ovarian cancer. This was before gay marriage was legal in Michigan and at the federal level. I remember those first days after she was first diagnosed like a fever dream: on top of the impact of the news and the explosion of doctors and tests that were required, I remember how scared we were about how my mom and her partner would be treated by the hospital staff. I will forever be in debt to the nurses and doctors of Henry Ford Hospital for how they treated my mom and her partner, treating her as my mom’s spouse, years before the law recognized them as such.

I know my mom would have also been amazed at the progress that has been made. It would take her breath away. And she would have wanted us all to recognize how far our country has come. But in the same breath, she’d be saying “keep on it.” She’d be fighting for people to have the personal and legal freedom to live the lives they want to live.

So today, and this month, I'm recognizing the work we still have to do, and celebrating those who have worked so hard to get us where we are today. Then I’m going to get right back to work. For my mom.

We have so much to celebrate this month—and so much more to do. Happy Pride!

Elissa Slotkin